After three Wrangell residents pleaded guilty to possessing and transporting illegally harvested elk, KSTK’s Colette Czarnecki spoke with State Trooper Alisha Seward. They discussed what Seward’s job entails at the Wrangell post and how she navigates complicated interactions.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
State Trooper Alisha Seward
I’ve been working for the state troopers for almost 11 years now.
I started in 2015 when I went to the academy. After the academy, I was stationed in Soldotna. I worked in Soldotna for, I want to say, about two and a half to three years. After that, I transferred down to Anchor Point, and then I decided I wanted to move to Kodiak. Then we transferred to Juneau, and then we moved to Wrangell, and we’ve been here for almost two years in March.
How has it been here in Wrangell for you?
It’s been good. I mean, it’s been different, because being here in Wrangell, it’s a single man post, where other places I’ve been, you’ve got a number of people what we call on our side, our brown shirts, are the wildlife troopers. And then the other side, we call blue shirts, are the actual state troopers who handle the criminal side. So here, it’s just me. I’ve got Wrangell Police Department, and we work very close together. I’m also my own maintenance person, mechanic, evidence custodian, janitor. On top of doing all the trooper duties that I have, I got a lot of admin duties. If something breaks, I got to figure out how to fix it.
You mentioned at other posts (you’ve been at) there were blue shirts and brown shirts. Would you consider yourself both here?
I would, yes. Overall, my title is a state trooper, I’ve been staying in tune with both sides. Where an assault is an assault, it stays the same pretty much anywhere you go, where Fish and Wildlife regulations, they’re the ones that change on various reasons that you’re in. So that one is always the more difficult one to keep up with. So learning the nuances of the wildlife side, there’s more regulations that govern the area that you’re in.
What’s your range that you cover?
On my day boat, it would be south to Myers Chuck, east side of POW, up to the southern side of Mitkof, up the Stikine River and all the back channel. In our overnight boat, we can go to Sitka, down past Ketchikan, up to Juneau, wherever the fisheries that are opening and closing.
Can you just talk a little bit more about what your job entails?
The main thing that I focus on is obviously Fish and Wildlife. They’re there to enforce the laws, whether it’s subsistence, personal use, sport fish, commercial fisheries, hunting, trapping, so anything that really involves any animals or wild fish.
What does an average day look like for you?
It all depends, like today, with all this snow that we’ve been having, a lot of times I’m running the roads making sure people aren’t in ditches, and if they need help, working on pulling them out of the snow. In the summertime, it’s a lot on the boat, because that’s when a lot of the commercial seasons kick off for commercial fishing. That’s when sport fishing is. In the fall, it’s focused on moose, deer and elk. In the wintertime, there’s residency investigations and then it will kick off here in February for the king crab season. So there’s only a small little bit of downtime in this job.
What do you enjoy about the job?
I create my day. I get to be outside a lot, I would have a hard time sitting behind a desk all day every day, and so it gives me the freedom to go out, pick what I want to do.
What challenges would you say you encounter?
Obviously it’s a single trooper post, but most of the time in the past, the troopers have had public safety technicians, which are essentially our aides or our extra hands and help. Like, during moose season, not this year, didn’t have any sublegals. Last year there were seven, and I dealt with six of them. So taking and not necessarily processing it all, but I think there’s three or four that I had to wrap with Saran Wrap, and then bag up in garbage bags, and then haul those to the cold storage to keep them preserved until after court. And that took a lot of time, a lot of effort.
I imagine you get backlash from some people. What is that like?
I mean it’s never fun, and I understand that people are out there recreating. There are laws and regulations put into place, and it’s never fun getting a ticket. I always tell people, ‘good people make mistakes,’ and I don’t think that people are always intentionally trying to break the law at all.
When there is backlash. You always want to try and de-escalate the situation. And my thing is, I really try not to get angry. I can have someone yelling in my face. My thing is, I’ll let them finish yelling, because I think that they’re more angry at the situation that I have to take care of, not necessarily me as a person. And so it’s just disassociating those two things.
Did you have to evolve into that way of handling those situations, or have you always been like that?
It started in Soldotna. Your day is filled from responding to 911 calls. You are put into so many different situations, from people crying over losing a family member to a physical disturbance. It’s taught me how to regulate my emotions, because I know that they’re dealing with stuff that is completely out of my control sometimes.
That leads me to my next question. How do you take care of yourself in terms of decompressing?
My husband is my rock. He’s who I come home to at night. And we talk about things because I’ve had hard calls that have been hard to deal with. He’s like my foundation.
What would you say to people who have a history of poaching?
If you made a mistake, whatever it may be, it’s always better to come and talk to me or turn yourself in. Yes, there’s probably going to be a ticket associated with it, but it’s going to be worse than if I have to find out and have to come deal with it later.
Is there anything else you would like to add to this conversation, about your job?
Every community you go to, there’s always people that love you and there’s always people that hate you. I take it with a grain of salt, because it’s the uniform I wear, and I think people just see the uniform and not the person behind it.
